Swing and a Mishap (Summersweet Island 2)

I have the night off, Shepherd was over on the mainland helping his dad fix a leaky sink at his parents’ house, and Owen had a few guys on the team currently sprawled around my living room surrounded by stacks of empty energy drink cans and bags of junk food on a PlayStation marathon. Needing to escape the constant arguing and shouting of a bunch of teenage boys acting like toddlers, the Dip and Twist was naturally my first choice.

“It’s not broken. I’ve rubbed up against how unbroken it is several times.” I sigh, feeling like such a jerk for complaining to Emily for a solid fifteen minutes since I sat down.

These last few weeks with Shepherd have been absolutely amazing. He’s spoiled me so much I don’t know how I’ll ever go back to not getting a professional hour-long massage once a week or not having to cook dinner ever. Shepherd either takes me to dinner, cooks dinner while ordering me to relax, or grabs takeout, making sure Owen is included on the nights he’s with us. And on the small handful of evenings we haven’t hung out, my freezer is fully stocked with all the food Shepherd’s mom brought with her when his parents came for a visit and ended up sleeping on my old, disgusting couch, both of them being super enthusiastic about it for some reason, staying up all night to play board games with Owen.

And don’t even get me started on the extravagance. I didn’t even know Shepherd owned a boat until it was delivered in the middle of last week. Ferry? What’s a ferry? It was like having a hot fudge sundae for the first time and knowing you’ll never be able to eat plain vanilla with nothing on it again. Screw waiting in line for twenty minutes just to go over to the mainland to grab a few things from Target. I made Shepherd take me to Target twice in one day just because he could, laughing like a lunatic as we flew by the ferry dock with everyone waiting in line. It was glorious.

These last few weeks have been amazing, and I constantly have to pinch myself, because it feels like a dream. We’re never short on conversation or laughter, I’m always counting down the seconds until I can see him again, and the way he is with Owen is so natural it fills my eyes with tears every time I watch them together. But ever since our first date when we were interrupted on the beach by Bodhi, Shepherd has been nothing but a perfect gentleman. And while I love every minute of his romantic and sweet side where he takes his time kissing me soft and slow, making sure I know how much he cherishes me, I’m seriously starting to wonder if that wild, uncontrolled, growly man who dry-humped me against the side of his cottage during our first kiss is the part that was a dream.

It doesn’t feel like a dream. Every time I close my eyes and think about that kiss, I have to rub my thighs together and shift in my seat, because I can still feel him there, so deliciously hard between my legs. My vibrators—the ones I already owned, since of course I bought an obscene amount of tickets with Shepherd’s money so he could take home that damn pumpkin lantern instead of putting any money into the date night basket—have gotten such a workout after all our nights together that my precious, beautiful silver bullet waved the white flag in surrender and refuses to fire back up.

“Yo, earth to Wren!” Emily shouts through my phone, snapping her fingers as I blink out of my daze. “Stop thinking about Shepherd naked and focus.”

I feel my cheeks heat with embarrassment and a whole lot of something else, when now I am thinking about Shepherd naked.

“I don’t know what else to do. I did what you said when we talked before Shepherd took me on our second date at the beach movies and I’ve started being bolder,” I explain. “I nibbled his ear, I looked at him suggestively a few times like I practiced in the mirror, I talked about my toys, and I even grazed my hand against his butt twice.”

“What are you, twelve?” Emily asks with an incredulous stare. “Just take your pants off and tell him to fuck you.”

“Emily!” I whisper-shout, looking back over my shoulder and then glaring at her. “There could be children sitting here at these tables!”

“You do realize it’s ten o’clock on a school night, your mom already closed, and I can clearly see all the empty picnic tables behind you, right?”

“Who needs to take their pants off?” we hear yelled behind me.

“Shut up, Ed!” Emily shouts as loud as she can through my phone before lowering her voice to talk to me. “Ed doesn’t count.”